David Ebershoff - The Danish Girl

“No. Nothing for me.” She poured the coffee for Dr. Hexler and then left.

“Mr. Wegener, I’m a specialist. There’s virtually no trouble I haven’t treated. If you are embarrassed, please remember that I’m not.”

Einar didn’t know why, but he suddenly wanted to believe Dr. Hexler would understand; that if he were to tell Hexler about the tunnel that led to Lili’s lair, that if Einar were to admit Lili wasn’t really him but someone else, Hexler would tap a pencil against his lips and say, “Ah, yes. No need to worry. I’ve seen this before.”

Einar began, “Sometimes I feel a need to go find Lili.” He’d come to think of it as a hunger. Not like a hungry stomach an hour before dinner; it was more like when you’ve missed several meals, when you’re hollow. When you’re concerned about where your next plate of food will come from, if it will ever come. It could make Einar dizzy. “Sometimes I lose my breath when I think about her,” Einar said.

“Where do you go to find her?” Dr. Hexler asked. His thick glasses made his eyes look as huge as pickled eggs in a jar of oil.

“Inside me.”

“And is she always there?”

“Yes. Always.”

“What would you think if I were to tell you to stop dressing as her?” Dr. Hexler leaned forward in his chair.

“Do you think I should, Doctor? Do you think I’m hurting something by doing this?” Einar felt small in his underpants, the crack of the couch’s cushions nearly swallowing him. Now Einar wanted some coffee, but he could barely reach to the table for the urn.

Dr. Hexler switched on the examination lamp, its silver bowl whitening with light. “Let’s have a look,” he said. He briefly pressed his hand on Einar’s shoulder as he stood.

“Please stand,” Dr. Hexler said, wheeling over the lamp, its casters trembling. He aimed the light at Einar’s stomach. The few freckles around his navel looked garishly brown, the few black hairs reminding Einar of the dust that gathers in a corner. “Do you feel anything when I do this?” Dr. Hexler asked, his palm against Einar’s stomach.

“No.”

“And this?”

“No.”

“What about here?”

“No.”

“I see.” He was sitting in front of Einar on a steel stool. More than anything else Einar wanted Dr. Hexler to declare that there was nothing wrong with Lili and Einar, that their shared body was no more a malnor mality than a nailless toe, or even Dr. Hexler’s long chin with the cleft so deep it could nearly receive a key.

“How about down there?” he said, pointing a tongue depressor at Einar’s crotch. “May I have a look?”

When Einar lowered his underpants, Dr. Hexler’s face stopped, only his nostrils, with their pores jammed with dots of black, moving. “Appears to be all there,” he said. “You can pull them up again. You seem to be in quite good health. There ’s nothing else you want to tell me about?”

Only the day before, Einar had crammed a rag into his underpants. Had Greta told the doctor about that as well? Einar felt cornered. “There’s something else I suppose I should mention,” he began.

When Einar told him about the bleeding, Dr. Hexler’s shoulders pressed together into a hump. “Yes, your wife said something about this. Is there anything in the blood? Is it clotty?”

“I don’t think so.” Another brick of indignity was mortared into place. The only relief Einar could find just then was from shutting his eyes.

“It’s time for an X ray,” Dr. Hexler said. He seemed surprised when Einar said he’d never had one before. “It will tell us if there ’s something wrong,” Dr. Hexler said. “It may also drive this desire out of you.” From the way his eyebrows lifted above his spectacles, Einar could tell that Dr. Hexler was proud of his clinic’s technology. He went on to discuss gamma rays and natural radium emanating from radium salts. “Ionizing radiation is turning out to be the miracle cure for all sorts of things. It works on ulcers, dry scalp, and most certainly impotence,” he said. “It’s become the treatment of choice.”

“What will it do to me?”

“It will look inside you.” And then, as if offended, “It will treat you.”

“Do I really need one?”

But Dr. Hexler was already sending orders through the funnel.

When they were ready for Einar, a skinny man with a sharp Adam’s apple led him out of Dr. Hexler’s office. This was Vlademar, Hexler’s assistant, and he led Einar to a room with tile walls and a floor raked for runoff, a drain in the corner covered with mesh. White canvas straps hung from the gurney in the middle of the room, the buckles shiny under the lights.

“Let’s strap you in,” Vlademar said. Einar asked if it was necessary. Vlademar grunted his reply, his Adam’s apple jabbing up.

The X-ray machine was the shape of an inverted L, its metal casing painted a muddy green. It extended over the gurney, a large gray eye of a lens pointed at the stretch of skin between Einar’s navel and his groin. There was a black glass window in the room, behind which, Einar imagined, Dr. Hexler was instructing Vlademar which round-knobbed levers to pull. It occurred to Einar, as the lights in the room dimmed and the machine coughed and then whirred, its casing vibrating tinnily, that this was only the beginning of doctors and tests. Somehow Einar knew the X rays would show nothing, and Dr. Hexler would either order more or send him to a second specialist, or a third. And Einar didn’t mind, not just then, because anything seemed worth undertaking for the sake of Greta and Lili.

Einar had expected the X ray’s light to be gold and flecked, but it was invisible, and he felt nothing. At first Einar thought the machine wasn’t working. He nearly sat up and asked, “Is something wrong?”

Then the X-ray machine switched into a higher gear, its whirring lifting an octave. The dented green metal casing rattled more, sounding like a baking sheet shaking dry. Then Einar wondered if he felt something on his stomach, but he wasn’t sure. He thought of a stomach alive with glow worms nested from the Bluetooth bog. He wondered if he felt a warm, fizzy feeling or if he was imagining it. He propped himself up on his elbows to look down, but there was nothing different about his stomach, gray in the dimmed room. “Please be still,” Dr. Hexler said through a funnel speaker. “Lie back down.”

But nothing was happening, or what seemed to Einar like nothing. The machine was clattering, and a blank feeling spread across his abdomen: he couldn’t tell if he felt something hot there or not. Then he thought he felt the pinch of a burn, but when he looked again, his stomach was just the same. “Lie still, Mr. Wegener,” Hexler’s voice boomed again. “This is serious.”

Einar couldn’t tell how long the machine had been running. Had two minutes passed, or twenty? And when would it end? The room dimmed further, now nearly black, and a yellow ring of light rippled around the gray lens. Einar was bored, and then, suddenly, sleepy. He closed his eyes, and it felt as if his body was becoming densely heavy. He thought about looking down to his stomach one last time, but his arms wouldn’t move to lift him. How had he become so tired? His head felt like a lead ball attached to his neck. In his throat Einar tasted his morning coffee.

“Try to go to sleep, Mr. Wegener,” Hexler said. The machine roared even louder, and Einar felt something hot press against his stomach.

Then Einar knew something was wrong. He opened his eyes just long enough to see someone lean his forehead against the black glass window, then a second forehead pressing, smudging. If Greta were here, Einar thought dreamily, she would unstrap me and take me home. She would kick the green machine until it stopped. A crash of whipping metal shook the room, but Einar couldn’t open his eyes to see what had happened. If Greta were here, she’d yell at Hexler to turn off the damn machine. If Greta were here… but Einar couldn’t finish the thought because he was asleep-no, beyond sleep.